Synopsis: From the back cover of the Commonwealth first edition: "Anod is a Kartog Guards warrior on a seemingly routine assignment when one of her partners, Captain Zitget, betrays her people and blows up her starship. Anod ends up in an isopod, twirling through space, barely alive, until she is found by a space trader. He takes her to planet Beta, where she meets human inhabitants not as advanced as in her society. After she meets Bradley SanGiocomo, Prime Minister of Beta, she discovers a side of herself she never knew existed. Meanwhile, Zitger, knowing she is the only one who can incriminate him, wants her dead. With the help of the Yorax, a corrupt interplanetary species, he starts and all-out war on the planet. Now, Anod must fight to save her own evolution and the planet she has come to think of as home."